Medicine & Health

Ron Powers has written a personal and historical book about the treatment of the mentally ill in the U.S. He watched his two sons be transformed by schizophrenia. His youngest son committed suicide after struggling with the disease; a few years later his oldest son was diagnosed with the same disease.

Anna Lembke's new book, Drug Dealer, MD, explores the origins of the prescription drug epidemic from a doctor's perspective.

Enter Me

He's helped many people through painful passages in their lives. And he's faced his own: Since a near-fatal auto accident in 1979, he's been paralyzed from the chest down. Gottlieb has had nearly three decades to come to terms with the changed circumstances of his body — but now, he fears, that body may be growing tired.

Oncologist Theodora Ross discusses the hereditary nature of cancer and her own predisposition to breast and ovarian cancer, which led her to have a double mastectomy and to have her ovaries removed.

Andrew Solomon, the author of The Noonday Demon, discusses the challenges of pregnancy for women who are depressed. The long-term effects of antidepressants taken during pregnancy are unclear.

Helene Cooper grew up in Liberia and still has family there. Reporting on the disease last month, she says when she saw a sick, little boy get out of an ambulance, she "completely lost it."

In a new book, bioethicist and internist Barron Lerner recalls how he came to question some of his father's medical practices — practices that were common among many doctors of that generation.

In his new book, Dr. Kevin Fong explores how humans survive extremes of heat, cold, outer space and deep sea. "We're still exploring the human body and what medicine can do in the same way that the great explorers of the 20th century and every age before them explored the world," he says.

Since Lyme disease was first identified in the late 1970s, it has become the most commonly reported tick-borne illness in the country. Journalist Michael Specter talks about his New Yorker article on the disease and its controversial history.